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Reaching mindfulness through psychotherapy and writing

Lia Govers

I am a Dutch-born woman, who lives in Italy since the age of 20, now there with her Italian husband and grown-up son. At the age of 18, after I left home, I already heard voices for a week, but at that time was still able to stop listening to them. I was very insecure like a child, was not 'grounded' like Alexander Lowen describes in his book 'The language of the body'. I have never been sure of the love of my mother..., felt always like a burden to her. At the age of 20 I left Holland, worked for 1 year like an au-pair and 19 years in a part-time job. I graduated in Pedagogy in Italy but never used this study for a job. I had continously problems mostly in the (confusing) communication with my mother and suffered psychosomatic diseases too, this all in the time before she died. When she died I started my manifest 'paranoid and delusional' 'schizophrenia', had a forced hospitalization at the end, lived 13 months in a halfway house and from then on started my psychodynamic psychotherapy in North-Italy for 9 and a half years. At the end I was invited to write my autobiographic story too, now published ('Healing from schizophrenia' by Lia Govers, available on Amazon and Lulu). My psychotherapy and writing process moved me to free myself, to become aware of so many details in my previous life story and to reach a mindfulness. Since then I give testimony of recovery during italian congresses of Mental Health and run a voice hearers-group in my city. Together with my ex-psychiatrist, dr. Giuseppe Tibaldi, I have also written 2 psychiatric articles.